Footsteps(99)

“Oh. That’s cute. Funny.”





Joey shrugged.





Sabina liked Joey—he was funny and sweet, goofy and young. He had been, anyway, when she’d first gotten to know the Paganos. Since he’d been hurt—and he really had been badly beaten—he was more short-tempered and, even, nervous. Carlo had called him ‘squirrely’ once. She hadn’t asked what that meant. She assumed it meant ‘like a squirrel,’ but the image hadn’t worked for her.





He was a little paranoid, though, she thought. Since his father and his oldest brother were treating him with cold shoulders, she assumed that was why he was uncomfortable.





Maybe this favor he was doing for Carlo, spending the day with her and Trey, would help to close the distance between them. She knew that Carlo had helped raise Joey, and she didn’t like to see them unhappy with each other.





Trey came down with his flying shark—still in the box—his swim trunks on over his shorts and his goggles on his head. Laughing, Sabina got him sorted out and packed the huge tote from the hall closet with beach supplies, including her own suit and a couple of towels.





Then they packed off into Joey’s Jeep Wrangler—top and sides open on this bright sunny day—to Quiet Cove Park.





~oOo~





Quiet Cove Park was a perfectly picturesque oasis in this quaint New England town. Meandering, tree-lined walking lanes all converged on an old-fashioned bandstand in the center of the park, where free concerts happened every Saturday during the summer. A duck pond and a picnic area under the mottled shade of stately trees completed the Rodgers and Hammerstein effect. The large, modern playground at one end seemed an anachronism.





Joey and Trey flew the big shark for about twenty minutes, but then the breeze picked up. After the second time the shark landed in one of those stately trees and Joey had to climb up and rescue it, they packed it up. Trey wanted to play at the playground, so they walked over and sat together on a bench, keeping an eye on him as he climbed and slid and spun.





They didn’t speak much. Joey scanned the park again and again, almost like he was on a schedule—one scan of the perimeter every three minutes, perhaps. Sabina looked around, too, paying attention to every blonde woman she saw. It was a lovely, late-summer day, and the park was crowded with lingering summer people. There were a lot of blonde women.





Finally, after they’d been sitting for more than half an hour, and Sabina had started thinking about suggesting that they head off for lunch, Joey sat back on the bench, his posture relaxing.





“Can I ask you something, Sabina?” Though Carlo and Trey called her Bina, she preferred everyone else to call her by her full name.





“Of course.” She glanced his way and then turned most of her attention back to Trey, who had made friends with a little boy who’d brought a dump truck to the park.





“You know what really happened to Auberon, right?”





Stunned, she swiveled her head to gape at him. “What?”





“I mean, you know. I know you know. But do you know?”





“Joey, we shouldn’t speak of this.”





“There’s nobody around to hear. I was just wondering how much you knew.”





“I know he can’t hurt me anymore. He can’t anymore keep me from being happy. That’s what I know.”





She began to stand up; she wanted to collect Trey and take him to lunch. She hoped that Trey would keep Joey from pursuing this terrible topic. But as she came off the bench, Joey grabbed her arm—hard—and pulled her down.





“I was there. I saw. I did some of it.” He laughed through his wired teeth, and that macabre vision was all the grimmer now. “Uncle Ben was really pissed off at him.”





“Joey, please. This isn’t right.” She pulled her arm, but he wouldn’t let her go, and Sabina began to feel fear. Real fear, like she hadn’t felt since Carmen had helped her off the beach that night that seemed so long ago. “Joey, please.”





He let up. “I just want to know how you get it right in your head. So it doesn’t keep showing up in there. I keep seeing it.”





“I don’t know. Joey, I’m sorry. I don’t know.”





“Do you feel guilty at all? For your part?”





“No.” Her fear took on a thread of anger at this last question, and she answered it immediately and firmly. “I don’t think of it like that at all. I don’t know what was my part in it, but I don’t mind having one. I am glad. I am happy. I have no guilt at all.”